Existence and uniqueness of traveling waves for non-monotone integral equations with applications (Q963711)

The authors study a mixed Volterra-Fredholm integral equation with the following limit form \[ u(t,z)=\int_0^{\infty}\int_{\mathbb R} F(u(t-s,z-y),s,y)dyds,\;\; t\geq 0,\;\;z\in\mathbb R. \] They investigate the nonexistence, existence and uniqueness (up to translation) of traveling wave solutions to the above equation in the case when \(F(u,s,y)\) is non-monotone with respect to \(u\). By a traveling wave solution they understand a pair \((U,c)\), where \(U\) is a bounded, continuous, nonnegative and nonconstant real function such that \(u(t,z):=U(z+ct)\) satisfies the above equation. It is proved that the above equation admits a unique (up to translation) traveling wave solution with speed \(c\geq c^*\) and no traveling wave with \(c<c^*\). The existence of traveling waves with speed \(c>c^*\) is established via Schauder's fixed point principle. As an application of their results the authors consider some nonlocal reaction population models.